“A martial art which cannot be validated and intensely pertinent to every second of your daily life is not a true martial art.” - Rev. Kensho Furuya
The life of a martial artist is one of shuuyou (修養) or “continual self-improvement.” It is commonly thought that one’s martial art can only truly become an art when it permeates in a positive way into our daily lives. One way that training improves our lives is that it teaches us how to have jiriki (自力) or “self-power.” Self-power is the ability to accomplish things based on our own efforts. One aspect of self-power is something called Zero-based thinking. Zero-based thinking is a decision-making process where we ask ourselves, “Knowing what we know now, would we make the same decisions?” Essentially, when we find ourselves in a difficult situation, we go back to zero and use the information currently available to start over and make better decisions. In the martial arts, zero can be considered to be the kihon-waza (基本技) or “the basic techniques.” Furuya Sensei would often say, “When you lose your way, go back to the basics.” Going back to zero is probably the single greatest thing that I learned in my own Aikido training, and it is something that I use regularly in my daily life. Years ago, as a high school dropout, something that Sensei said in class really made an impact on me. He likened self-improvement to a chain and said, “In all training, we follow the rule that you are only as strong as your weakest link. All weak links must be continuously rooted out and corrected. Make your weakest link into your strongest.” The strongest chain method: start with a thorough self-examination, identify the weakest link, put in the work to make that link the strongest link and then start the process over until the desired result is achieved. The two biggest factors to using this process to achieve success are honesty and humility. We cannot identify what is wrong or fix what is broken if we are not honest with ourselves and we need to be humble enough to begin to fix it or ask for help if need be. Regardless, if we are a martial artist or not, everything we do should be to make our lives better. Therefore, a martial art must positively permeate into every aspect of our daily lives and help us to make our lives better.
Today’s goal: Using what you now know, figure out what needs to be changed.